Smiles all round for Girls Aloud on the first night of their UK tour at the Nottingham Arena as critics praised a restrainedly raunchy romp through 18 songs and dances.

Packaging considerations ranked high for reviewers of the TV-made band. The Mirror's 3am girls admired "their sexiest outfits yet", with a costume range that spanned scientists to beach babes but still managed, as the Times pointed out, "to reveal body parts only a GP should see."

The Sun noted the presence of a new demographic among the girl group's traditional pre-teen fanbase: male fans delighting in "dance routines that stripper Dita Von Teese would be proud of."

But good clean fun still prevailed during a roundly acclaimed cover of the Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict a Riot - no one failed to miss the deliberate substitution of the word "bus-stop" in place of "condom." The Times declared the act, "cheeky pop with substance," and wrote that the "more Pan's people than people power" dance routine "served only to make them more appealing."

For the Telegraph, too, gaps in singing and dancing talent were more than compensated for by the group's obvious, "rapturous" enjoyment in performing: "Girls Aloud aren't about polish and perfection. They're about fun, and they deliver it in heaps."